They grinned at one another to reassure the other the joke was safe. And I felt a stab of longing for this. The ease with which they argued. The long-term love that thudded through them, the experiences shared, fights healed, shadow parts of themselves exposed to light over time and still loved anyway. Something only time could give them. Things were mostly great with Ben, but I still felt slightly on a trial period, waiting for his verdict. It was so hard not to see moving in together as an audition I could fail, and I longed for a relationship where I’d already got the part.

“I’m really tempted to indulge her,” I told Katie, “I might ask her to elaborate.”

“Don’t, please.”

Heather didn’t need prompting before launching in again, her face tinged from the wine. “I’m just saying, men our age were raised while consuming giant amounts of free porn which normalizes brutal and often violent sex in this hookup culture clusterfuck, and women have been groomed to be chill with it. Hell, they’re even watching porn WITH these guys to show just how chill and cool girl and not-vanilla they are. And then we’re claiming women are choosing to have this sex that hurts them? Actually physically leaves marks on their bodies? With men they don’t even fucking know half the time? And we’re not allowed to question that? Not even once?”

Heather’s rant had the desired effect of being a total brain-fuck, and I had a sudden rush of memory of the sex Ben and I had the other night. Angry, thrusty, minimal foreplay, against the wall, not even looking at each other. There was no way of dodging it. It had been porn sex. Ben loved and respected me...and yet that was the hardest he’d ever been, fucking me like that, like I wasn’t really a person. Whereas I didn’t even orgasm... I got off only on how much he’d wanted me, on the playing of the part, even though I wasn’t technically getting off at all...

“Maybe these women are just horny?” Katie suggested, her hands a steeple under her delicate chin. “Maybe they’re just horny, and maybe they just like sex like that?”

Heather threw her head back. “Then riddle me this,” she said. “If that’s the case, how come only seven per cent of straight women orgasm during a first-time hookup?”

“Is that true?” I asked, sitting up in my chair. The statistic made me feel instantly better about myself.

“Yes! If straight women aren’t even coming through these porn-show one-night stands, why the hell are they even having them?”

I was very still for a second. “Validation?”

“No, Fern, empowerment, remember?”

And we all laughed at how ludicrous Heather had made that seem now.